Clarkson said news of his diagnosis ‘landed harder than I thought’
The 66-year-old revealed in the latest episodes of the fifth season of his series Clarkson’s Farm that he had been diagnosed with “aggressive” prostate cancer(Image: PA)
Jeremy Clarkson has revealed that he has met privately with Lord David Cameron and other well-known figures to share their experiences with prostate cancer.
The 66-year-old broadcaster reveals in the latest series of Clarkson’s Farm that he was diagnosed with an early detected but “aggressive” form of the disease. Speaking to The Times, Clarkson said a recent PSA test showed no signs of cancer, confirming he is now in remission.
He said: “I spoke to David (Cameron) about it earlier this morning. He said the amount of people who come up to him are mostly public and say if you hadn’t owned it I wouldn’t have been checked and they wouldn’t have found it.
“So now there’s a group of us, (food writer) Giles Coren, David, me, one or two other people, and we get together for lunch every now and then. Everyone has different Gleason scores and everyone has different Stockholm and PSA scores. We all compare notes and I actually get confused about what mine were.
“But it’s pretty funny to see people look at us and go, ‘that’s a pretty interesting group of people, what do they all have in common?’
Clarkson went on to say that the news of his diagnosis has “hit harder than I thought it would”. He added: “That’s why I have to say to everyone reading this, please, please, please go and get checked.
“It’s not unpleasant, it’s not undignified, and it’s a no-brainer. I did, and that’s why I’m sitting here talking to you 11 months later. I’ve seen so many people die from cancer. I can’t bear to think what it must be like to live knowing that a disease is going to kill you.
“It must be very, very, very upsetting. I don’t know the story of what happened to (former Olympic cyclist) Chris Hoy, but to be told that your cancer is inoperable and to still carry on, you have to be incredibly brave.”
Speaking from a hospital bed at the end of the season finale, Clarkson revealed that he had experienced complications during treatment, which he told The Times were caused by him resuming a course of tablets he had taken for his previous vascular and heart problems.
He said: “It was terrible and it was all my own fault. I had been taking medication for heart problems and I had to come off it during the cancer treatment.”
“Two or three weeks after the cancer surgery, I thought I’d better put myself back on the blood thinners. Big mistake, huge. It (resulted in) a very big emergency in the middle of the night. I’m not even going to go into the treatment that was required as a result of that because it was horrible. I didn’t ask a doctor, I just thought, ‘I’m sure the blood is fine’ again.”
The diagnosis came nearly two years after Clarkson underwent a heart procedure in which he was fitted with two stents to improve blood flow to the heart. He said his doctor had told him to stop working after the operation and he had been advised to replace work with golf in a column for The Sun at the time.
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The TV presenter previously quit smoking after contracting pneumonia on holiday in Spain. Clarkson’s Farm follows the long-time TV presenter and his crew as they navigate the challenges of running Diddly Squat Farm near Chipping Norton, Oxfordshire. Since deciding to run his farm in 2019 and subsequently launching his popular reality series, Clarkson has become a vocal supporter of farmers and took part in a protest in London against the government’s move to introduce inheritance tax on farmland in November 2024.
The sixth series of the show is due to air in 2027.
